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“I was shot.”
I feel the blood drain out of my face. It shocks me so much to hear this that I have to step back, and I end up leaning hard against the bathroom counter, feeling like I’m unable to breathe in the presence of this dangerous information. “Shot…? But when? By who? You need to go to the hospital right away, what if—”
“I’m not going anywhere. It’s been dealt with. It’s just a bit stiff, that’s all.” He comes to me, brushing a strand of hair out of my eyes, his fingers dusting lightly across my forehead. His voice is reassuring, almost in a sickly way, making me worry for him more. “Come back to bed. You need to sleep.”
I bite my cheek idly, looking to his sleepy eyes. I want to fight. Or maybe I don’twantto, but I think that I should. I should demand answers and apologies and recompense. I should demand to know the plan. But the truth is that Iamtired, absolutely exhausted by everything that he’s brought into my little life. And I have a sense that sleeping with his arms around me, settled into his warmth, his safety, will push me past all of this fear and pain; I have the sense he can give me real rest. It’s an odd realization, considering everything we’ve been through, years ago and in the present. But, even as dangers and uncertainties lurk around each corner, monsters that he brought to me, I feel safest with him.
He takes my hand and brings it to his soft lips, kissing each of my knuckles slowly, with perfect gentleness, one by one, moving down my hand as he holds it delicately with his own. Then he pulls me gently back into the bedroom. Under the duvet, settled together like lovers, my sleepiness begins to twist and reform into something new, as my senses begin to heighten and my mind swirls with thoughts. The heat is dense in our little cocoon, and he’s only in a shirt and boxers, and I can feel the blazing fever of his skin against mine. I do feel safe here. I feelisolated, separate from the whole world. In a new universe that we are able to create with one another.
“Are we really going to get married?” I whisper, butterflies invading my stomach as the words leave my mouth.
“Shh,” he says back, reaching for me, stroking a slow finger over the swell of my top and then bottom lip. “Sleep, Katerina. Sleep, and everything will make sense in the morning.”
But I don’t want to sleep. I press closer to him, rearranging my body so every part of me is touching every part of him: my chest against his chest, my thigh between his thighs, my cheek against his cheek. I don’t want to sleep and let this moment end. It’s one of the good ones, and memories are a fragile thing between us. I want to remember. I think I want it to last forever.
When I move my head forward to kiss him, he kisses me back with a care I’ve never felt from him before. Each new kiss is a shock to my senses, and a new puzzle piece that falls into place, as I slowly make up the picture of the man before me. The man I could marry. The man I prayed to the skies for as a naïve girl, and the one that’s come back to me after all these years. I know it’s because of the state I’m in, my wounds and injuries, and probably the fragility of my heart right now. But I like it. I like that the rugged, dangerous, dark man I know Aleks to be has such a soft side to him. It’s a caring side that is coming out, slowly but surely, like a delicate flower starting to bloom. The feeling held within this kiss is something new entirely. It’s almost loving.
He is so tender, making sure to hold his weight over me as I pull him onto me, his body towering over me as his warm tongue slowly pushing into my mouth and captivating my senses, moving slowly down to my neck, up beneath my ear, leaving a line of sweet, sweet fire raging across my skin; his hands are careful but deft, brushing oh-so softly over my arms, my breasts, my stomach. I bite my cheek slightly, eyes flutteringshut, as one of his hands slides down alongside my hips, gripping my thigh, cradling me in place with my legs spread.
There are no words to be expressed between the two of us, the moment too intoxicating for either of us to say anything. Even as the kiss deepens to somewhere we’ve never been, and the heat between us begins to swelter. Even as I reach for him, pulling his shirt over his head and casting it aside, the fabric lost to the darkness of my bedroom. Even as he does the same with mine, moving his hands deliberately across my skin, his fingers dancing carefully over my ribs, my nipples that are now hardening under his touch. I can feel his cock, hard as steel, pressed against the inside of my thigh, and it awakens my core, beginning to squirm underneath him, unable to keep my legs still. I reach for him, stroking him through the featherlight fabric of his boxers as we kiss, savoring the soft shudder of pleasure that works through him at my touch. I know this is stupid. Everything we’ve done up until now has been so feverishly dumb, and in a state where I’d been away from him for so long, I may have been able to control my urges. My desires. But we’re in so deep now; why the hell should we bother to resist any longer? This is nowhere he and I haven’t been before. And the truth is that there is nowhere I would rather be.
There are no pretenses, no deception in this moment. Our masks are down, and we are with one another freely. And though the moments begin to fall hard and fast into each other, there is no urgency, either; no hurry to push through the atmosphere we’ve created. He’s pulling himself free from his boxers, and I release my needy grip on his torso so that he can drag my underwear down the length of my thigh, tickling my skin as he travels down, over my knee, off the ankle. Then, he’s on top of me again, our bodies flush and moving softly together, our mouths locked in a blissful connection. I feel his tongue move against mine, but it’s not fighting and brash like usual. Weare moving fluidly against one another, our spit mingling, our skin silkily caressing one another as the heat builds between us.
Could we make something of a marriage? Could this be what we are? Not the spiteful, annoyed obstacle that we pretend to be for one another, but something more? Something together?
I bite my lip, harder than anticipated, as he teases me, pushing himself between my legs, but not yet burying himself inside of me. The heat that builds at my entrance is all-consuming, like a fever, cooking right up through my brain. I can feel my hips bucking, begging him to take me, to keep me as his own. The fire is building in my core, and he’s sending me to the edge just with his presence between my legs, so close to filling me with what my body is pleading for.
Could we make a future out of this? CouldI?
Do I want to?
A soft grunt leaves his lips, the sound entering my mouth as my own moans do the same, inescapable from our connection. I reach out to touch him but he pushes my hands away to my dismay, laying them flat above my head. He slides one large, feverish hand over both of my wrists, holding me there softly, but firmly. He’s taking control, so that I don’t have to. Holding me in place, with his body hovering over mine, I feel more connected to him than ever before. I remember how electric our encounters have been in the past, but the blooming sensation between the two of us now is different. He’s dominating this situation, pressing me into the mattress, teasing me as if I’m not already hot and needy for him. And I like it. No—I love it. Much, much more than I should. It seems completely impossible, considering the circumstances, that I should feel safe with Aleksander Lukin, but even after everything—I do.
And when he slides inside of me, slowly, sinking into and engulfing himself in me, that realization only feels heightened, better, stronger. I silently thank him for keeping me safe untilnow, and for satisfying my urges, indulging in my wants with me. I gasp as he moves slowly within me, arching my back, biting my lip. His breath is ragged, low and rough with pleasure as it passes through his reddened swollen lips. I love that. I love how good I make him feel. It makes me feel powerful, in a way, to be able to put such a strong, put-together man in shambles before me. And he does it right back to me. When it’s just us, it feels like nothing in the world is wrong—with his life, with us, with the tenuous future unspooling ahead of us. Right now, this feels OK. No, better—it feels right. We feel right, together. Sharing our breath, our sweat, our saliva. We are intertwining faster than either of us expected, but it feels so good.
It may be coming in the shape of hell…but what if this is just a second chance for us? What if this is meant to be, in some wild and dangerous way? What if we were always supposed to be together, Aleks and I? If the stars aligned in some precarious way years ago, lifetimes ago, and it’s just been a waiting game between the two of us, until our fates collided into the explosion that’s detonating now?
As he plunges into me, he brings me back to the moment, his rhythm slow and deep, cinching my pleasure tighter and tighter with every stroke of his cock hitting the perfect places. God, he feels so fucking good. I can’t think of anything else, anything but him, and us, and this. The moment is intoxicating, and my mind is beginning to go fuzzy in ecstasy. It’s not animalistic between us this time, though, like some primitive instinct or a desperate reflex that’s begging to be exerted. It feels so much more intimate than that—like we’re making a decision. We are deciding our fate, here and now, together. With every intimate touch, stroke and kiss shared, we’re choosing this.
He kisses me deeply, letting my wrists free from his dominant hold as passion flows between us. My hands fall back to either side of my head, bent at the elbow in a completely laxmanner, and he slides his palms over mine, intertwining our fingers and pinning me in place, sending flickers of electricity from my fingertips to his. But we move together, in a smooth, experienced tandem, shifting and grinding our hips into each other, meeting each other where we always seem to, in the perfect duet. Our breath is in sync, and it’s getting faster, more ragged as our bodies meet one another, heat building between us, pressure building in each of our cores.
“Kat,” he whispers, his voice threadbare, no doubt on his way to an intense orgasm. I’m close, too, keeping pace with him, but him saying my name like that sets me right over the edge. “Oh, fuck, Kat, I’m—”
“Me too,” I gasp, and it’s all I can manage to say before I slip into the deep, sweet rush of orgasm, my legs shaking and quivering around him, my insides clenching against his cock that’s ramming into me with feverish intensity. He groans loudly, our hands locked together, our fingers clenched tight, our bodies rocking harder, deeper into one another, intertwining at any point possible, trying to meld, to be a part of one another. Over and over, stroke for sweet stroke, and I am lost in it, lost in him, gasping for any sense of coming back down to Earth.
I feel like my body is falling apart around him, completely shattered into delicate, lovely little pieces. Every cell, every nerve unspooling, warmed as though by sun and slowly, delectably combusting; his mouth finds mine as I continue to twitch and squirm through the cloud of ecstasy, warm and wet, his tongue dominant but lavish against mine, pushing through the barrier of my lips. Loving. Loving the moment, loving me, I’m not sure, but in this moment, I don’t mind either. And when the ecstasy begins to burn off, to fade in its sweet tides, I fall back gasping onto the bed.
He doesn’t pull out of me, or fall down beside me like usual. Instead, he stays in his position above me, poised above me like a shield, his throbbing member still warming inside of me. I move slightly, just to feel him. Our hands are still clasped tightly together, and he touches his forehead to mine softly, and I can’t help but wonder: how many sidesarethere to this man? How can he be so lethal, so violent and frightening and dangerous…and then be this man, too? A lover? Sweet, and passionate, and loving? A romantic, like me. A romantic, like I never let myself wish he was. The moment is sweet enough to taste, and I close my eyes, engulfing myself in his scent, his aura. This is what life should feel like. Like you don’t want to move a muscle, not because you think it’ll disappear, but because you’re so entirely comfortable in your own skin with someone who you want to spend forever with.
After what feels like forever and also not long enough, he moves to lay down beside me. He pulls me close, encircling me in his arms, his skin just now starting to cool off from our heated union. I can hear his heart, still beating fast, against my ear. His chest rises and falls as he slowly calms his breathing.I have that effect on him, I think, with pride. It brings me joy, more than I can imagine is good for me, to know that I’m able to turn this man, this strong, dangerous man that has an undefinable darkness to him, to something softer. Sweet and gentle. I turn my face into his neck, nuzzling into him and taking a deep inhale of the sweet sweat that has beaded on his skin.
For the moment, he’s erased the worst of the last few days. All of the danger, the fear, the anger in my soul is gone, and has been replaced with a bliss that, in this moment, I think only he can show me. I let it be that way. I need rest, a moment of real relaxation and peace. I need a moment where I can be myself, away from the world outside these walls. And I think that he can give it to me. After a short while, my eyes begin to feel heavy,and eventually my eyelids flutter shut. It’s not long before I find myself in a deep, stress-free slumber.
***
When I wake up, Aleks is already gone. I hear voices downstairs, which startles me. One I recognize as Yuri’s, another as Aleks. But there’s a third, too—a woman’s voice.
Heat spreads up into my battered face. I almost don’t have it in me to get up and get dressed and start the day, after everything. But I have a sense that things are starting to intensify for real; that we’re reaching a point there is no coming back from. And if I’m honest…I want to know what woman is in my house right now. Talking to the man I’m supposed to be marrying. The man who slept in my bed last night.
